Travel perks one way to keep employees engaged

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OTTAWA - As businesses start to recover from the economic downturn and start hiring again, experts say they need to begin worrying about retaining top-performing employees who might suddenly realize there are better opportunities out there.

That makes employee engagement the next big thing in human resources, because employees who are engaged - who feel they're getting as much out of work as they're putting into it - are more likely to stick around. And they add value to the workplace to boot.

"Staff engagement is the key to our mission," says Kaity Benedicto, director of human resources for Travelzoo North America, a global publisher of online travel deals.

"Employee engagement could be ... how engaged are they at their job and how engaged are they at understanding the business and providing some feedback as to how we can improve the business, either the client experience or the user experience, which is very important for us," says Benedicto.

"Engagement is also really thinking five steps ahead, just as our executives are thinking five steps ahead. We give them an opportunity to do that, there are new products that have been created coming directly from an employee idea that came up in a meeting or whatnot and was acted upon."

One way Travelzoo has found to engage employees is to get them directly involved in the product they're selling with the Travelzoo Experience. Each year, any employee who has worked for the company for more than a year is given from $1,500 to $2,000, plus an extra three days' vacation, to take advantage of any travel deal they see. In return, all they have to do is take pictures and write up their experience for Travelzoo's newsletter to subscribers.

Benedicto says since the deals can disappear as quickly as they come up, managers are encouraged to be flexible and fast when responding to employees' requests for time off.

"I think employees don't necessarily need to see a monetary value to feel empowered, or to feel wanted by their employer or their boss," says Benedicto. "Our staff really feel that the employer is giving me something unique and different that they don't have to give," says Benedicto.

This perk is a win-win for Travelzoo, since not only does it give employees a bonus, but it broadens and deepens Travelzoo's value to its customers.

Martha Appiah, a producer at Travelzoo whose job it is to work with companies offering the deals on the website, says most of her colleagues are avid travellers. Since she started two years ago she has used her Travelzoo Experience bonus to take a short cruise, spend a week in Jamaica and fly to New York.

"It's a perk that's in line with where we work," says Appiah. "Whereas we could have gotten a gym membership or a free lunch, free babysitting or some other service, I think this is just a direct correlation between the company, what we do, and what we all like."

Benedicto says offering travel as a perk is a growing trend, as is recognizing employees' contributions long before the traditional 25-year gold watch. She cites financial firms as among the companies that offer travel as a reward to top-performing employees.

Everyday Style, a Canadian direct sales company, also offers its top- performing consultants an all-expenses-paid trip each year.

Susan Fox, who lives just outside Port Hawkesbury, N.S., is an Everyday Style group leader who has earned the right to one of these trips for five out of the eight years she's worked for the company by meeting a target amount through sales and hiring - and on a couple of good years has earned a free trip for her husband too. On other years they've had to pay his fare.

All of the consultants go together, but no business is conducted during the trip.

Fox says she started with the company, which offers entertaining, cooking and home decorating products through home sales, because it offered the flexible hours she needed as a mother of three, "but now that I'm in it, I think I'm in it because of the trips." She just returned from this year's trip to Hawaii, and has also been to Greece and Costa Rica.

"I look forward to it, that's my goal each year," says Fox.

But it's not always just a perk to top performers. In a video on its website, polling firm Environics Communications tells prospective employees that after five years with the company they'll be sent on a trip of their choice, and will get to go on another after eight years.

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